| "Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." ~Richard Steele, Tatler, 1710 |
February 2010
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Greetings!
Happy Groundhog Day. We're glad to hear there are six more weeks of winter. I, for one, read more when it's raining, and we need both the rain and the customers.
In today's newsletter: an update on our annual reshuffling of the store's sections, the Book of the Month, a sales pitch for lovers of LPs (remember those?), word of a rare book show this weekend, and eight new books we think you'll like.
There are still a few sale areas for bargain shoppers: 50% off remaining 2010 calendars and 25-50% off 100s of new DVDs.
Oh, and our recently revamped web site is here, our blog is here, we Twitter here, and our eBooks are here (for Palm, EPub for IPhones, and Adobe).
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Pete et al
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Pardon our dust!
Each year, after calendars sell down, we move and expand certain sections of the store. This year, we're going a little further than normal. There are multiplie goals, but our main aim is to offer you more of what you want. To that end, the biggest expansion will be in children's and youg adult books (with more space to hang out and read, too!).
If things look a little unfamiliar when you come in, or your favorite section isn't where it once was, please ask for help. Thanks for you patience as Green Apple continues evolving.
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Book of the Month: Day Out of Days
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Each month, we present a brand-new book about which we're so enthusiastic that we guarantee it 100%. Our second of 2010 is, nominally, at least, a collection of short stories by Sam Shepard. Here's our pitch:
While Sam Shepard's newest book is billed as "short stories," it feels more complete than that. There's a unnamed narrator wandering highways and byways, mostly in the American West, stopping in places most people don't, telling stories we need to slow down to hear.
Some of the stories are very short, some are written as poems, but all are unified in Shepard's gravelly alter ego voice. Walter Kirn put it well in his NYTimes review: "His words have a flinty, mineral integrity, especially when he
describes the people around him, who come off as distinctive
individuals but also have an enduring archetypal feel, like the iconic
figures in Whitman poems." The book does feel like somethng between mythology and contemporary fiction. It's not exactly a novel, but all the vignettes, monolgues, poems, and images add up to something whole and unique.
If you're up for a long walk down a dusty highway, Day Out of Days is for you.
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Long playing temptations
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In
our current rearrangement of the store, Green Apple has moved the vinyl
section closer to the front of the annex--it now resides right
next to the CD section. That's because some folks don't realize that we carry over 1000 new titles and many more used. If
you haven't touched your records in years, perhaps you want to sell
them to us for cash or more in store credit. Our selection covers Rock,
Soul, Jazz, Blues, Electronic, Reggae, Brazilian, African, Country, and
Classical records. We even have a section of $2 LPs. From 1960
or 2010, inexpensive reissues to audiophile 180 gram pressings, we have
something for all record lovers:
- Jazz classics on Blue Note, Prestige, and Columbia from Coltrane, Miles, Mingus, Dolphy, Byrd, Monk, Rollins, and Blakey.
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A wide range of rock including brand new releases from Beach House,
Animal Collective, Flaming Lips, Jay Reatard, Grizzly Bear, and Wilco.
We have reissues of essentials from Iggy Pop, The Velvet Underground,
Dead Boys, The Fall, The Jam, Ramones, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Kraftwerk,
Mazzy Star, Spacemen 3, The Who, Eno, Wire, and David Bowie.
- Soul and R&B from James Brown in 1964 to The Menahan Street Band in 2008.
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A growing Electronic section including 12"s from Planet Mu Records
(Dubstep and Experimental) and DFA Records (Disco-Punk, House, Italo).
- Amazing compilations of Latin Funk, Afro-Beat, and Ethiopian Jazz in our international section.
Come
on down to 520 Clement Street to sell or browse. We buy music every day
from 10am to 5pm. We pay competitively for vinyl and CDs. |
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This weekend's rare book show
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Green Apple's co-owner and rare book guy Kevin Hunsanger will spend this weekend at the San Francisco Antiquarian Book, Print and Paper Fair 2010 at the San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center. Come see the gems from Green Apple's collection and see what other collectors have to offer. It's worth the $7 (with coupon here) to browse truly unusual and rare books. And say hi to Kevin when you're there!
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| Eight Interesting New Books
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Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Thierry Vernet
Bouvier's unpretentious and wonder-filled memoir of a trip he and a friend, the artist Thierry Vernat, took from Geneva to the Khyber Pass in a convertible Fiat in 1953-54, is a masterpiece of travel literature. Permitting themselves a single luxury, slowness, the pair traveled through a now vanished world, and the record of their adventures proves the difference between travelers and tourists. This books gets Green Apple's highest stamp of approval.
 A Common Pornography by Kevin Sampsell
This is an interesting, honest account of Kevin Sampsell's life, both good and bad. It isn't a "woe is me" type of book but a simple retelling of the facts of his life. He describes the short pieces in here as "memory experiments," and that is how they read. Sampsell intertwines the tragic with the everyday, the dysfunctional with
the fun, lending A Common Pornography its undeniable, unsensationalized
reality.
This collection of articles showcases some of this nation's most brilliant long-form literary journalists. Charles Bowden, for example, is one of my personal favorite badasses. It's also put out by The New Press which, much like Harper's, works in the public interest by giving us alternative stories all too often deemed unprofitable.
Presents the results of the first-ever landownership survey of all 197 states and 66 territories of the world, and reveals facts both startling and eye-opening, such as: *Only 15% of the world's population lays claim to landownership, and that landownership in too few hands is probably the single greatest cause of poverty. *Queen Elizabeth II owns 1/6 of the entire land surface on earth (nearly 3 times the size of the U.S.). *60% of America's population are property owners. That's behind the UK (69% homeownership). With its relevance to contemporary issues and culture, Who Owns the World makes for fascinating reading. Both entertaining and educational, it provides cocktail party conversation for years to come and is guaranteed to change the way you view the U.S. and the world.  Point Omega by Don DeLillo
A new DeLillo is always cause to celebrate. This just-released novel is 117 pages and, says Dan Fesperman in Publisher's Weekly, "so spare and concentrated that the aftereffects are more powerful than usual. Reading it is akin to a brisk hike up a desert mountain-a trifle arid, perhaps, but with occasional views of breathtaking grandeur. There is no room for false steps, and even the sure-footed will want to double back now and then to check for signs they might have missed along the way. Holding down the book's center is a pair of inward-looking men: Jim Finley, a middle-aged filmmaker who, in the words of his estranged wife, is too serious about art but not serious enough about life; and the much older Richard Elster, a sort of Bush-era Dr. Strangelove without the accent or the comic props. We join them at Elster's rustic desert hideaway in California, where Elster has retreated into the emptiness of time and space following his departure from the Bush-Cheney team of planners for the Iraq War. Elster had been recruited to serve as a sort of conceptual guru, but he left in disillusionment after plans for the haiku war he preferred bogged down in numbers and nitty gritty. Finley hopes to coax Elster into sharing that experience while the camera rolls. But as Elster himself says in the first chapter, true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. From time to time, at least, DeLillo proves him wrong."  Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann, Mark HalperinHere's the book everyone is asking for. And frankly we were caught a little off-guard. Like celebrity bios, political tell-alls usually don't sell at Green Apple very well, but every once in a while, demand spreads like wildfire and we get caught short. Well the wait is over on Friday--we're getting a good healthy stack of this titillating book in before the weekend. Call ahead to reserve a copy or come in this weekend for some juicy political intrigue. (415) 387-2272  Crazy Like Us: the Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters
Here's the kind of compelling journalism threatened by the trouble in the newspaper industry but explored in great depth in book form: it seems America is exporting not only Disney movies and fast food, but our neuroses, diagnoses, and treatments of mental illness. This book looks at four phenomena in proposing its thesis, like the rise of anorexia in Hong Kong and the shifting mask of schizophrenia in Zanzibar. 
Cupcake by Charise Mericle HarperIt was only a matter of time before the cupcake craze trickled down to childrens' books. Luckily, this sweet book does it right. If you have a 2-5 year-old child in your life, give them this colorful tale of the cupcake finding its perfect topping.
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Thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
Pete et al
Green Apple Books and Music
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